Guess whose photo is on the cover of the local Yellow Pages directory?

So this is a fun story. Back in the fall, I was contacted through Flickr about using one of my photos of Watson’s Mill in Manotick. It’s one of my favourite photos, but as I’ve assigned my licensing rights to Getty Images, I can’t license it privately. I explained that to the person contacting me, and gave them the link to license it directly from Getty. This happens fairly often, and I’d say about one time in ten the buyer actually pursues the license with Getty.

In this instance, for whatever reason they weren’t interested in following up with Getty and asked if I had any other photos that were a “recognizable landmark of Ottawa west.” As you know, I have a few (cough) photos of the Mill kicking around, so I sent them a few images. They liked one that wasn’t represented by Getty and licensed it directly from me. Goodbye middleman, hello 100% profits!

And that’s how my photo of Watson’s Mill ended up on the cover of the 2015 Ottawa West edition of the Yellow Pages directory!

Fun, right? Okay, okay, so the actual paper version of the Yellow Pages directory is almost completely obsolete and is slowly being phased out. I had to explain to the boys what the Yellow Pages directory even was, and how important it was back in the days before Google. Do you remember how important you felt the first time YOUR name was printed in the phone book? I don’t know exactly when we stopped receiving ours, but I used to check every year when it came out to see my name in print. I’m tickled to see one of my photos used on this vanishing bit of history!

Even more fun, when I was driving home from work tonight, I could see a copy of the Yellow Pages at the end of the driveway for all the houses on our street:

This makes me laugh, because for years I’ve used “about as exciting as getting your name published in the phone book” as a yardstick of micro-fame. Now getting your photo on the COVER of the phone book, that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

And now you’ll know what I’m up to if you see me rifling through everyone’s recycling bins on the next garbage day. Autographed vanity copies for EVERYONE! 🙂

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So I have to admit I was surprised when ours showed up the other day – I had no idea they still published a paper version. But yeah, that’s the end of an era, eh? Who knows, it may be your photo on the LAST OTTAWA YELLOW PAGES EVER.

I was stunned to see ours as well. it didn’t have the pretty picture of the mill on it though. actually, I have no idea what the picture was. and it went straight into the recycle bin. hmm, now I’m curious. I need to go dig it out.

Photo of the Day

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Hi, I’m Danielle Donders, but my friends call me Dani, and the Internet calls me DaniGirl. I'm a Canadian photographer, blogger, government social media strategist and mom to three boys. Everything else you need to know - and a whole lot more! - is in the blog.

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